Yeah right, I type back. If Candace needs me, she's got a hilarious way of showing it.
Ellie Kate's response is immediate. She doesn't want to admit it. But she's desperate.
Desperate for what? I think. But I don't type back because at that moment Carrie pulls open the glass front door, ushering in the clanging noise of a passing trolley.
"What happened?" she asks breathlessly, clambering onto the tall metal barstool beside me. And then, before I can answer, she says, "Sorry it took me so long. David wouldn't shut up." She giggles, probably in reference to the fact that sometimes she and her boyfriend are in work situations together, since her firm represents the company he manages. Apparently he was on her call. Carrie doesn't handle his account (though she used to, before they started dating), but in her new role she oversees the big picture for all of her company's clients.
I smile, but my lips are tight, and she instantly sobers up. "What did Candace do now?"
I decide to delve right into it, though I wouldn't tell her anything over text. "She's taking Rachael to France instead of me," I say, seething all over again as the words come off my lips. "Probably High Point too."
As the most senior designer at the firm besides Ellie Kate, who doesn't want to travel and be away from her daughter, I've been making the company's major buying trips for the last three years. I'm also the best at it—better at spotting trends and negotiating deals than Candace herself, as she's told me numerous times. Our annual Paris trip is coming up in late summer, and I've already been researching flea market dates and fabric shows, with the expectation that I'd be accompanying Candace as usual. Of course I can see how traveling together would be uncomfortable after all that's happened in recent weeks, but we spend the better part of these trips going our separate ways anyway. We don't even sit together on the plane—she flies business class and sticks me in coach.
I guess I've been naively hoping things would blow over by then. After all, if Candace isn't going to fire me, we have to figure out how to keep working together. Because I've decided: I'm not going to let her force me to quit.
I've thought and thought about Christine and Meghan's comments at Jake's birthday party about starting my own business, and I'm not ready. I took some business classes after moving to Memphis—that's actually how I met both Carrie and Jeremy, all three of us in the same marketing class while she was getting her grad degree and Jerm was finishing his MBA—and I learned just enough to scare the hell out of myself. I don't have the foggiest desire to write a business plan, find investors, scout real estate, hire an accountant. Designing my own offices would be fun, but I'm well aware that the realities of entrepreneurship are anything but fun and games. I can't remember the exact statistic, but I learned in school that something like seventy-five percent of small businesses fail within the first two years. And even though the market has bounced back pretty well since the subprime lending crisis—people are building and remodeling again, and business has been strong for the past two years—the local economy is still feeling some aftershocks of the recession. Not exactly an ideal time to start a new business.
Nope, Candace is stuck with me until and unless she decides to fire me. Once again, I consider the fact that she and I need to hash things out instead of letting it all simmer until it boils over, which seems inevitable and impending.
I guess all this time I've been waiting for Candace to make the first move. Instead, she's been ignoring me completely, apart from her passive-aggressive attempts at sabotage.
I ponder this fact as I take a slow sip of wine. This passiveness on Candace's part is as shocking as it is ineffective. She's well known for her balls as a businesswoman, so I'm not sure where her conflict avoidance is coming from. I know timidity is one of my personality flaws, but I've never thought of Candace as weak-willed.
I glance up and realize Carrie is staring at me, clearly waiting on a response to a question I didn't hear.
"What'd you just say?"
Her lips twist in an amused smile. "I just said, 'Earth to Jen.'"
"Oh, sorry," I say. "I was just thinking about how I need to corner Candace and hash this out with her. She can't keep treating me like this, even if she does own the company. I've done nothing since I've been there but work my butt off and bring in new clients."
"Hear, hear," Carrie says. "I couldn't agree more." Nathaniel walks over then and makes small talk for a few seconds, and Carrie orders a Tiny Bomb, a local beer. I eye her curiously.
"Since when are you a beer drinker?" Carrie's even less of a beer girl than I am, and I only order beer when I'm already sloshed and trying to save money while extending my buzz. And even then I'll only drink light beer.
She looks sheepish. "David's kind of getting me into the craft brew scene," she says. "That new tap room that opened on Cooper is really awesome."
"How dare he expand your horizons," I say, winking at her. "Lemme try a sip. Since I'm being forced to accept so many new things lately." At this, my expression sours.
"Yeah, so, Paris," she says, thanking Nathaniel when he deposits her pint glass in front of her on a cardboard coaster. "Are you sure she's cutting you from the trip? How'd you find this out?"
It's my turn to look sheepish now. "Well, I'm not a hundred percent," I say. "Quinn told me that Rachael told her that Candace asked her to go. I was out on an installation this morning, and Candace wasn't in the office this afternoon, so I couldn't get confirmation. And Rachael's barely speaking to me these days."
"Really? You haven't told me that," Carrie says. She takes a sip of her beer and slides it down the bar for me to try. "How long has that been going on?"
I pick up her glass and take a sip, screwing up my face at the bitter taste. "Blech. How can you like this stuff?"
"This one's a little hoppy," she says. "You have to get used to it." She gestures at the glass. "Take another sip."
I raise an eyebrow and pick the glass back up, and sure enough, it's smoother on the second go-round. I still don't love it though. "You shouldn't have to work so hard to like something that isn't even good for you in the first place," I say, laughing. "But I do get it. It's like coffee or wine. An acquired taste."
Carrie smiles and reaches for her glass, shaking her head, and I move happily back to my wine.
"As for Rachael, I don't know. It's not like we're not getting along, at least outwardly. But things have been awkward ever since that day Candace screwed with my project. We've always been friendly, and like, we used to eat lunch together once or twice a week, either in the break room or out somewhere, and that hasn't happened at all since 'the incident.'" I make quotation marks in the air with my fingers, knowing that Carrie knows I'm talking about the Facebook screw up. "I sort of felt like her mentor, in a way."
Like me, Rachael went to SCAD for design school. My old academic counselor contacted me to help her get an interview with Candace after she did an internship at a swanky firm in Palm Beach. She's only been on staff for three years, and she assisted on several of my projects in her early days with the firm.
"That's weird," Carrie says. "It's not like your problems with Candace have anything to do with her."
"I know." I chew on the inside of my cheek while I mull this over.
"Well, maybe it's not true," Carrie continues, ever the diplomat. "You know Quinn likes to stir things up. You just need to ask Candace about it. And if she really isn't sending you on the buying trip, you should ask her point-blank why. It sounds like there's more going on here than Candace being pissed about a Facebook status. Which you still don't know for sure if she even saw."
"I don't think she did see it," I say. "Unless somebody copied it and showed it to her, I don't see how she could have, since we're not friends on Facebook. But I guarantee she heard all about it. Much less interesting news travels fast in the design community, and you know Memphis is like a small town when it comes to gossip. You saw what happened at Greencork." I pause with a start. "Oh, that reminds me, I put in a bid
on that project Bradley Pepper mentioned that night. You know, the condo conversion I told you about?"
"I think that's great," Carrie said. "You should totally go for that." She pauses for a beat. "But you're avoiding the main issue."
My brain is already spinning in a new direction, wondering when I'm going to hear back from the developer on that condo project. I put in the bid more than a week ago. Does that mean they decided to go with somebody else? I can't imagine that Marc Rasmutin, the developer, wouldn't at least have contacted me to let me know. I need to give him a call…
"Hellooo? Earth to Jen again." Carrie is waving a hand in front of my face.
I give her a wry smile. "Have I told you about my seven-step comeback plan?" I ask. Last night I pulled up my list for the first time since typing it out. Now that Candace has once again decided to screw with me at work, I'm more determined than ever to outplay her by kicking total butt. And landing the condo-conversion job would be a great first step in making that happen. It's no Emory Brewster, but it's still a big commission and a high-profile project. Plus, it'd be fun—I love adaptive reuse projects. The interiors of the condos will be modern, but the architect is keeping the brick shell of the 1930s industrial building intact and incorporating original structural details into the units. That blend of period detail with modern-industrial design is my favorite aesthetic to work with.
So anyway, screw Candace. Screw Jeremy. I'll show both of them by being so awesome they'll regret dumping me.
Carrie brings me back down to earth. "Does it involve the hashing out you mentioned earlier? Because you can't keep avoiding this problem with Candace forever."
I take another pull of my wine. Forever is an awfully long time. I'll deal with Candace when I'm ready. And that'll be when my life is once again going according to plan.
* * *
Later that night, I'm working from home to make up for the fact that I stormed out of the office before I finished researching seating options for the bakery project. I'm sprawled back on my living room couch with my feet resting on a pillow on my coffee table, laptop on my lap, as usual. I feel the ghost of a miniature schnauzer at my side—usually when I'm in this position, Simon would be curled into a tight ball and pressing against my right hip. I keep reaching down absentmindedly to scratch him behind his ears. A pang of misery and anger washes over me each time I realize anew that he's not there.
I swear I miss Simon more than Jeremy. Jeremy works such long hours that I'm sure Simon is miserable too, which only pisses me off more. Unless, of course, Brianna is home enough to keep him company. I don't actually know what Brianna does at Inglewood Print Media, though I have a feeling, considering the timing of Jeremy's most eligible bachelor status, that husband hunting is an unlisted skill on her résumé. Good luck with that, I think, jealousy now stirring itself into my brewing pot of bitterness.
I'm not getting much work done—I keep finding myself distracted by these other thoughts. For some reason, Jeremy is under my skin tonight. I haven't heard from him in a couple of weeks, which is fine and normal under the circumstances, but still, I have this odd feeling there's something more to the story that I can't put my finger on, like the other shoe has yet to drop. Plus, I came across his favorite tie yesterday at the bottom of a basket of clothes that need to go to the dry cleaners. I added it to the box of other random items of his I've been collecting—a shoebox crammed with old NFL trading cards that was on a shelf in my closet, the travel coffee mug he uses when he goes golfing, his prescription motion sickness pills, my spare key to his condo. I can't decide whether to leave the box on the porch and text him to come pick it up or to invite Carrie and Amelia—who's in town this week with her husband, Noah—over for a bonfire in my backyard fire pit.
I could use my key to drop it off at his place during the day when I know he's at work—and that's tempting because I could see Simon again. But with my luck Brianna would be there, and that wouldn't be pretty. Plus, I'd be tempted to stage a dognapping, and that wouldn't play very well into my seven-step recovery plan.
My plan. Ever since I told Carrie about it, my hastily typed-out, life-affirming list has been nagging at the back of my mind. I minimize the search engine on my screen and dig the Word file out of my documents folder. I snicker when I see the file name, "Jen's Amazing Comeback Plan." The conflicting mix of optimism, misery, and cynicism tied up in those four words sums up how I felt when I made the list—and the list itself sums up my entire approach to life.
I'm the queen of the to-do list, to the point that my friends and coworkers make fun of me for it. Even now, multicolored Post-its dot the door of my fridge, the cover of my laptop, and the desk beside my front door, and that's just what's within view. In my bedroom, more Post-its dot my nightstand, and in the bathroom I even have notes taped to the mirror, two favorite inspirational quotes: "You must do the thing you think you cannot do," by Eleanor Roosevelt, and, "By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail," by Benjamin Franklin.
I've always operated with a plan—setting goals that fit my idea of happiness and success and then working hard to achieve them. And until now life has always gone according to plan. Pass the test. Check. Make straight As. Check. Get into first-choice college, graduate with honors, land the great job. Check, check, check. Land the perfect guy, plan the perfect wedding, buy the perfect house, and be the perfect mom to the perfect number (two) of perfect kids.
Um…
Where did I go wrong?
I feel like I'm drifting in space—not like an aircraft out of orbit, but like the crew member who's fixing the aircraft, only to find that the line tethering me to the ship has come loose, and I'm drifting, airless, weightless, into the empty vastness of an unknown sphere. The list has blurred in front of me, and I feel like I'm about to come apart at the seams. I squinch my eyes shut, clamping down on the tears that are suddenly threatening to spill over, and take a deep breath. Then I open my eyes and focus on the words on the screen, which feel like a cross between a soothing balm and a rescue mission.
Without my plans, without my goals, I'm lost. I'm nothing.
One foot in front of the other. I glance down over my list. Tomorrow, first thing, I'll work on step one and begin setting up meetings with all my clients—just to make sure they're still confident in my competence and abilities, even if Candace isn't.
This includes Brewster, I think, though my stomach tightens at the thought. Even though it's sure to speed up the confrontation I can feel coming with Candace, I need to start inching back into my territory and fighting to get my client back. Candace hasn't asked me to do any more grunt work on the project since that first meeting after the incident, but that doesn't make me feel better—it just makes me feel like Brewster is more out of reach.
I'll call him tomorrow. He'll be the first client I call.
Already, operating according to plan, I feel stronger.
To get my life back on track, to find my way back to the ship, I've just got to keep moving.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Out of Control
The next afternoon at work, I lean back in my chair, feeling satisfied with myself. Not only have I sent emails, left voicemails, or actually spoken to every single client I've worked with in the past two years, I've landed two new leads from my efforts. I've already followed up on both, and I have a consultation next week with a couple—a young doctor and her husband—who are building a five-thousand-square-foot house in the 'burbs.
I also finally followed up with Marc Rasmutin, and it turns out the financing hit a snag, and they haven't started reviewing the proposals yet for the bicycle-factory condo conversion. So I'm still in the running for the job.
The one client I haven't called is Brewster, and I scroll through my contact list until I reach his name—again—and stare at it for a long moment before clicking back out of the contact list and setting my phone on my desk with a thud. Ellie Kate's head pops up.
"Everything all right?" she asks in her hon
ey-soft voice, which holds strong traces of a Southern Mississippi accent— Ellie Kate grew up in Vicksburg, down in the Delta. Her accent is a little slower, a little less sharp than Memphis's, though both accents are genteel in their own way.
Everybody in the office has been shooting me strange glances this afternoon. I don't usually work the phones like I've been doing today. None of us do. We all stay pretty busy, and honestly, by soliciting more work, I'm a little worried I'm going to overload myself. I'm already working five projects at the moment, from my big bakery client all the way down to a one-session paint consultation I have scheduled for next week. This business is always a little bit hurry up and wait, and I've learned I need to keep about a half dozen projects running at any given time to keep my income in a steady range. I'm in the waiting phase on the bakery right now—waiting for the contractors to finish the floors, waiting for the electrician to finish wiring for the lighting, waiting for the pastry cabinets to ship.
I'm good at the balancing act, which is partly why this job is perfect for me. Designers have to be detail oriented and at least somewhat organized despite our right-brain tendencies, and my system of Post-its hasn't failed me yet.
I realize I've left Ellie Kate hanging for a beat too long.
"Everything's fine," I say, drumming my fingers on my desktop and not looking up at her. Out of the corner of my eye I see Rachael rise from her desk with her purse over her shoulder. As soon as she rounds the corner into the lobby, on her way out of the office, I make a decision. I push back my chair with a loud scraping sound and stand, still not looking at Ellie Kate, though I can feel her eyes on me.
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